1. Technical Field
The present invention is related to Internet Protocol (“IP”) multicasting, and more particularly to IP multicasting over a non-IP multicast supported network.
2. Description of Related Art
Over the past ten years, the bandwidth capacity available to consumers for receiving content from the Internet and other networks has increased ten-fold and more. The increased bandwidth capacity has enabled consumers to download larger and larger files and other content, including rich media and multimedia content such as audio clips, video clips, songs, programs, and movies. This increased bandwidth capacity has increased Internet usage and the potential for enjoyable and productive usage.
The content may be delivered to users, for example, as real-time IP multicast or unicast streams. IP multicasting is a method to send a single message to multiple recipients belonging to a multicast group. To multicast content, a multicast group is created by a multicast router and Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) queries for the multicast content are sent out to clients via the router's network. Clients that want to receive the multicast content send a IGMP report, in response to the IGMP query to the multicast router and are added to the multicast group. Any client that is a member of the multicast group receives the multicast content. The IP multicasting method can reduce the unnecessary network load caused by the unicasting method, which sends out multiple copies of the same message to multiple recipients. Despite the increased bandwidth capacity, however, most networks, especially Internet Service Provider (“ISP”) networks, are not IP multicast enabled. Enabling IP multicasting in a network requires equipment upgrades. Also, broadcasting of heavily requested content may be bandwidth prohibitive for many networks. Unfortunately, the necessary equipment upgrades are often not undertaken by many networks. Many networks do not make the necessary equipment upgrades because the equipment upgrades are not cost efficient.
What is needed is a mechanism for delivering IP multicast content to users via a non-multicast enabled network.